Black flash design of a coffee cup with swirling steam and the word coffee written in script, shown without a placement on the body.

Coffee cup with swirls and script

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A solid black vector-style design of a coffee cup on a saucer, with the word coffee written vertically in looping script. Decorative spirals form the steam rising from the cup and the swirling pattern inside the cup. The image is pure black on white with a bold, simple composition.

Lettering Coffee Cup Saucer Steam Swirl Script Spiral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad poured the first cup before the sun cleared the ridge, the way he had every harvest since Mum packed the flask in the back of the van. The cup was an old enamel thing, chipped white at the lip, and he filled it so strong the spoon stood up. Down the rows the pickers were already stretching their backs, and the Bramleys hung like lanterns in the grey light.

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"Drink it before it goes cold," he said, which was a joke, because nothing in that orchard went cold in August. The steam climbed off the surface in slow loops and came apart over the grass, turning the same way the swirl sat in the bottom of the cup, a spiral that kept on turning even when you stopped looking at it.

Then the Hendersons' lad came up the track on a bicycle, shouting that the lorry had broken down on the Ledbury road and the whole load of plums would spoil by noon unless somebody drove the old tractor and trailer to the market. Dad set his cup on the wall. Nobody had touched it.

I drove the tractor. When I came back at dusk the cup was still on the wall, cold and full, a brown ring dried at the rim. I drank it anyway, standing in the stubble, and the last mouthful tasted of smoke and sugar and that first grey morning, which is what he always said coffee was for.